William Scott, R.A.

Gallery Moos, Toronto, where acquired by the present owner, circa 1985

London, Gimpel Fils, William Scott Permutations, 23rd May - 24th June 1978, cat. no.3;
Toronto, Gallery Moos, William Scott, 7th - 25th October 1978, cat. no.5 (as Permutation White).

Sarah Whitfield (ed.), William Scott Catalogue Raisonné of Oil Paintings Vol. 4, Thames & Hudson, London, 2013, cat. no.851, p.237, illustrated.

The following condition report has be prepared by Stuart Sanderson (Paintings Conservation) 69 Rylett Crescent London W12 9RP The painting is unlined and on its original stretcher. The surface is unvarnished with no apparent dirt layer. The paint is sound and in good condition. Fine vertical cracks in the middle of the composition, following the centre bar of the stretcher are faintly visible. The tension along the width of the canvas has caused a fine pattern of stress cracks at the sides, and there is some minor paint loss at the very edge of the turnover. Under ultra violet light there is an area towards the bottom right corner that fluoresces. I do not think that this is retouching, as it has a similar appearance to the underlying paint film, which fluoresces with a slightly orange cast. The original paint in the area seems undamaged. Housed in a thin, strip frame. Please telephone the department on +44 (0) 207 293 6424 if you have any questions regarding the present work.
"In response to your inquiry, we are pleased to provide you with a general report of the condition of the property described above. Since we are not professional conservators or restorers, we urge you to consult with a restorer or conservator of your choice who will be better able to provide a detailed, professional report. Prospective buyers should inspect each lot to satisfy themselves as to condition and must understand that any statement made by Sotheby's is merely a subjective, qualified opinion. Prospective buyers should also refer to any Important Notices regarding this sale, which are printed in the Sale Catalogue.
NOTWITHSTANDING THIS REPORT OR ANY DISCUSSIONS CONCERNING A LOT, ALL LOTS ARE OFFERED AND SOLD AS IS" IN ACCORDANCE WITH THE CONDITIONS OF BUSINESS PRINTED IN THE SALE CATALOGUE."

We are grateful to the William Scott Archive for their kind assistance with the cataloguing of the present work, which is registered with the William Scott Archive as number 918.

 

Appearing on the market for the first time, its whereabouts unknown until now, the present work is a major example to emerge from Scott’s Permutations series, which he began in late 1977 and finished in the spring of 1978 - one of his last to deal with the still-life subject on such a large and comprehensive scale. It consisted of seven canvases, of which this is the third, with the dominant colour included in the title (another example, Permutations 7 – Grey was sold in these rooms, 9 May 2007, lot 150).

Scott’s commitment to the still-life genre was the defining feature of his career and the opportunity afforded by the recently published catalogue raisonné to survey his entire output reinforces the enormity of this singular dedication and the scale of his achievements. He offered a significant and individual approach to the dilemmas of figuration and abstraction which dominated painting in the 1950 and 1960s, and continued to revise and renew his approach in a radical, reductionist method throughout the last two decades of his life.

The genesis for Scott’s lifelong treatment of the still life was a visit to an exhibition in Paris in the summer of 1946 entitled A Thousand Years of Still Life Painting, which left him 'really overwhelmed by the fact that the subject had hardly changed for 1000 years, and yet each generation in turn expressed its own period and feelings and time within this terribly limited narrow range of the still life ' (Scott, quoted in Norbert Lynton, William Scott, London 2004, p.61). Despite the seemingly 'limited' subject, the exhibition left him in no doubt as to the power of the genre and its capacity for artistic creativity. By 1969, the year that marked his new series on the theme, he had developed the distinctive forms evident in the present work - the long handled frying pan, square bowl and round bottomed dish. The instantly recognisable forms clearly reference early works such as The Frying Pan (1946, Arts Council Collection, Hayward Gallery, London) whilst the minimalist handling demonstrates how his work had evolved in an abstract direction since the 1940s. 

In 1953, Heron remarked that Scott ‘has a strength and directness – that of pure intuition – which quite precludes the soft picturesqueness and prettiness which so much English painting – even of an “abstract” order – cannot escape, it seems’ (Michael Tooby and Simon Morley, William Scott, Paintings and Drawings, Irish Museum of Modern Art, 2004, p.8). Such insight is explicitly seen in the daringly sparse space of undisturbed colour in Permutations 3 – White, the absence of any literal reference and the simplicity of the delineated forms. It is in these works that the purity and force of Scott’s vision is paramount.